Upgrade the Motorola Droid 3 to Ice Cream Sandwich via MIUI 4

MIUI 4 has finally landed on the Motorola Droid 3 in the shape of a port of MIUI 4 for the Droid 2. Thanks to XDA Developers member techno-update, Droid 3 users can finally enjoy this ROM on their devices.

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For those of you who are not familiar with the ROM, MIUI is famous for its distinct and unique user interface, with the option to customize it even further with fan-made themes. It’s one of the most popular Android ROMs in the world, based on Android 2.3 and 4.0 and featuring a better experience and richer themes.

Unfortunately, the port is still in its early stages so there are quite a few bugs that need to be ironed out. A number of things don’t work very well, at the moment, such as Ice Cream Sandwich camera features and HW Codecs.

Currently, video is not possible and lockscreen wallpaper cannot be changed. If you don’t set a pattern lock, the device goes into bootloop, but we’ll provide you a temporary fix for that at the end of this tutorial. Though the developer has stated in the most recent update that the bootloop problem seems to have been fixed, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Everything else, however, seems to be in working condition.

We’d like to remind readers that this MIUI 4 port is only compatible with the Motorola Droid 3 and not with other handsets. If your device is not a Motorola Droid 3, we highly discourage attempting to flash this port as it may result in bricking.

Requirements

Rooted Droid 3 with ClockworkMod Recovery installed. See this guide if you need assistance.

Flashing this port may result in data loss so make sure to create a backup of your important files.

Make sure to fully charge the Droid 3’s battery so that the device won’t shut off in the middle of the flashing process.

Boot into recovery mode. You can do this from the Droid 3 Recovery Bootstrap app. Just tap the Bootstrap Recovery button, then tap the Reboot Recovery button.

Once in recovery, make a Nandroid backup through Backup and restore > Backup. This allows you to revert to your previous ROM should something not work out with the MIUI 4 ROM.

Select “Wipe Data/Factory Reset.”

Select “Wipe Cache.”

Navigate to “Advanced” and then select “Wipe Dalvik Cache.”

Navigate to “Install Zip from SD Card”, browse for the MIUI 4 package, and select it.

Repeat the previous step, but this time, choose theme.zip (fix package for the theme issue).

Once the file has finished flashing, select “Go Back.”

Select “Reboot System Now.”

Once your phone has booted up, DO NOT lock the screen or reboot the phone. If you do so, your phone will go into a bootloop. To avoid that, go to Settings > Security and from there, set the phone’s Screen Lock style to Pattern.